


"Date Night"

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Night Horror, POV Second Person, With Emphasis on the 'Hurt'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6116124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks at you for too long, gaze unreadable, and you wonder vaguely if he minds being alone here with you. He asks, “Want to help me catch a night horror?"</p>
<p>“Is that a trick question?”</p>
<p>“What the fuck’s tricky about that? You, me, night horror. Perfect romantic evening, Parrish.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Date Night"

**Author's Note:**

> I'm bad at fluff that doesn't involve people getting mauled by horrible monsters, so uh. Here's some Pynch ;) ;) ;) 
> 
> Thanks to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta'ing, check her out if you want to read the moving, emotional saga of Tad Carruthers.

It’s been hot all day, but it wasn’t until evening when the clouds closed over and trapped the stale heat that things went from ‘bearable’ to ‘lie under a fan and pray.’ Your apartment does not have a fan, and Monmouth has two, and apparently tonight is the night you find the very limits of your pride and stagger through the low, clammy heat to put yourself at the mercy of Richard Campbell Gansey the Third’s air conditioner.

The Camaro’s not in the lot when you arrive, but the BMW is, and you let yourself in. Ronan’s at the pool table, concentrating hard with the kind of frown that suggests his effort is not paying off. He glances up at your arrival with a vague flicker of interest, and then turns back to the table. It might be the quietest Monmouth’s ever been.

“Gansey’s out?”

Ronan doesn’t look up from his game. “He and Blue are having a séance for Noah.”

 You consider. “A séance _for_ Noah, or because Noah wanted to see a séance?”

“One of those,” Ronan replies. “They talk to the dead every day, so I don’t know why they’re bothering. Maybe they’ll contact a ghost who knows better jokes.” He strikes with the cue and there’s a messy clatter from the balls on the table. His frown deepens.

The window air conditioners are weak but doing their best, and you appreciate the shiver of a breeze they manage to stir around the apartment, knowing it’s cooler than anywhere else you could be. You make the mistake of throwing yourself onto the leather sofa, and when you roll over to watch him play, the sound of your unpeeling is beyond unflattering. He doesn’t care. He focuses, lines up his shot, delicately punts the white ball into the corner pocket, and hisses with irritation.

He is not very good. You’d know that even if you hadn’t half-caught dozens of pool games over your father’s shoulder, and as it is, you think you might be better than him. You weren’t here last time they had an actual game, but from the later grousing at Nino’s, you know Gansey is appallingly good. He probably learned to play in a room called a ‘den’, under the guise of paternal bonding.

But terrible or not, you still like watching, even if your attention is less on the felt and more on Ronan; on the muscles of his back tensing and relaxing with every movement of his shoulders, the sharp contrast of the black ink at the base of his neck, the way his arms shift as he adjusts his grip on the cue, the power in the attention he’s levelling at his game. There’s something magnetic about his focus, there’s something admirable about the sight of Ronan Lynch _trying_ , there is something far too compelling in the occasional, sideways glance he shoots you.

You don’t quite fall asleep, but it’s a near thing, propped up on the couch, lulled by a not-quite-cool gust and the sound of billiard balls and Ronan’s growing frustration. It’s only silence that has you checking what’s changed, as Ronan abandons the game and sets the cue down. He looks at you for too long, gaze unreadable, and you wonder vaguely if he minds being alone here with you. He asks, “Want to help me catch a night horror?”

You blink. “Is that a trick question?”

“What the fuck’s tricky about that? You, me, night horror. Perfect romantic evening, Parrish.” He grins at you, the flash of his teeth familiar and lazy and dangerous, and your heart gives an awkward stutter that you conceal out of habit.

You do not want to help him catch a night horror – you don’t even want to get near one, if you can help it – but you want to stay in Ronan’s company, especially since he seems like easy company tonight. And, most importantly: “Your car has good air con, right?”

The BMW has an incredible, powerful air conditioning system that Ronan refuses to use. Instead he winds down the windows and attempts to drive fast enough to create a breeze, which you resent immensely. “I could have stayed at Monmouth under a fan,” you tell him, though you wouldn’t have.

“Shut up about the heat, or I’ll tell Gansey you’re suffering,” he snaps back. You shut up, even though he’s feeling it just as badly as you are, pale cheeks reddened. Outside, Henrietta passes in a dizzying rush, darkened buildings hollow and waiting in the night.

“Do you know where to look?” you ask, after you start down the same street for the third time and it’s become obvious that he doesn’t.

“They come to me,” he says. “It’ll show its ugly face soon enough.”

“And then what?”

He glances at you, like the answer’s obvious. “We kill it.”

It’s not like you thought he’d meant ‘catch’ when he’d said ‘catch’. You just hope he understands that you’re not going to help. You didn’t see the first one, but you saw the aftermath in Ronan’s room, black blood spattered like oil and staining the floorboards. You saw the aftermath on Ronan, too, the long gouges its claws had dug into his skin, matching a dozen other scars whose origins you no longer need to wonder about. Even immaculate Gansey bore marks from wicked hooks in his skin, and there’s something improbably worse about the kind of thing capable of harming someone as untouchable as Gansey.

Ronan will probably call you a coward if you stay in the car. You think you’ll stay in the car anyway. If he’s out looking for it, then he must have a plan better than a box cutter this time.

The night doesn’t seem to cool like a night should, and you keep your eyes off the dashboard clock so you don’t have to be aware of time passing. As soon as you know what time it is, you’ll start your calculations, finding how many hours you’ll have left to sleep and how much you’ll pay for it tomorrow, you’ll have to go home to lie sleepless in your sweaty sheets, unhappy but in the correct place. If you don’t know the time, then it can’t have power over you, and you can lean into the illusion of wind from the open window, and you can feel Ronan’s restless energy beside you, and you can hold onto this endless moment.

The car stops, eventually. Halfway out of town, like Ronan’s just gotten bored and can’t decide where he wants to be anymore. You follow him out of the car, looking around the little patch of weeds he’s pulled over into. The moon is a bright smudge behind the darker smudge of all the other clouds in the sky, and the world feels strangely contained, like everything is finite without the possibility of stars.

There are no other cars on the road, the last lights of Henrietta are behind you, and the still air feels like a held breath. “Ronan,” you ask, your words moving in ripples, disrupting the heat, “What are we doing out here?”

“Nothing,” he says, and it’s a statement, an active action. He’s standing under the only tree you can see along the road, and it’s bitter and dusty from having to watch so many cars pass. You stand close enough to him to see the gentle way he presses his palm to the trunk, even though it’s not one of his trees, even though it’s voiceless and mundane.

Without the moon or streetlights, you can’t see him so much as the impression of him, your brain telling your eyes where his features should be and your eyes doing their best to filter that information back to you. You think you can still see him looking at you, though, his expression safe and invisible in the dark. It’s an irritating trick; you’d give anything to see his face, but you know if you lit it up, his expression would become something else entirely.

You think _unknowable_ and turn away with a shiver of something you don’t want to acknowledge. You let your feet lead you aimlessly away from him, from the road, into the middle of a field owned by someone but never used. It’s the space you need, and you wish the sky overhead was open, but you’ll take what you can get, crack your neck on both sides and try to suck in enough of the sticky air to keep breathing. You listen out for the sound of the BMW’s engine, on the off chance you’ve stepped on some unwritten law of Lynch pride, but you don’t expect to hear it.

You hear something else instead. You hear a rustle and a _chirr_ , the sound almost close enough to a natural one to feel like a mockery, and fear comes to you on its own. You turn slowly, hunched shoulders your only defence, but it’s so miserably dark that you can barely pick out the shape of the grass you’re standing in, let alone anything _in_ it. Ronan has strayed back to the car, turned the ignition, and the headlights are a beacon, a lighthouse on a very distant shore. “Parrish,” he shouts to you across the field, “Come on, fuck this, let’s go.”

You can see the suggestion of him behind the headlights, leaning on the roof of his car and waiting for you. You take a single step towards him, and the dark rushes in. There’s nothing more than a shadow over you, but it’s dense and heavy, and it knocks you to the ground, a dozen claws finding you all at once. You let out nothing but a miserable huff off air when you hit the ground, and you curl in on yourself at once, feeling vicious talons ripping through your shirt to get to your skin, bloody furrows as deep as any Ronan bears.

It’s _sharp_ where you’re used to blunt, driving in and _dragging,_ tearing agonising seams into your skin. Your wretched brain holds you still because that always used to work, it’s the easiest response to pain, to not move and to wait for rage to burn itself out. You think you can outlast it, if you’re quiet and don’t struggle and just keep covering your head.

Something hard and piercing drills into your shoulder, stabbing so deep a ragged gasp bursts from your lips and a disconnected thought struggles through your head, nothing but the memory of Gansey saying _beak_.  

Sick and shaky with pain, you think that if it has a beak, it’s not human, and inhuman things will never decide you’ve had enough and relent. You imagine yourself dying, silent and unseen in a field, Ronan only coming to find your corpse when he’s sick of waiting. A set of scythes find the curve of your neck, catch and cut through your skin like you’re made of paper, and you suck in as much air as your lungs can hold, shout “ _Ronan!_ ”

More claws find the side of your face, rake down hard, and you struggle to unfold yourself enough to push it away, and you don’t know _how_ to fight it off, the idea of retaliation leading to anything other than escalation still dizzyingly novel.

Something slams into it, something with fists and a crowbar, and the horror rolls off you, distracted by its new target. You drag a few miserable breaths in, find your throat slick with your own blood and the creature’s rancid grease, and then you struggle upright. You’re searching for shadows in shadows, following the near inaudible thuds of impact to the skirmish.

Most of your mind has shut down, and the waking parts are lost and afraid and hoping that maybe if you just lay down this will end on its own. You don’t. You counter your overwhelming fear with the knowledge that Ronan has done this before, and you tread slow and wary steps towards them.

A yard away from the surging mess of monster and Ronan, your foot finds something hard, and you jolt. Not taking your eyes off the chaotic rumble of fists and claws, you reach down, fingers finding cool metal. His crowbar; still no good to you, not when you can’t tell in the dark where the creature ends and he begins, when his blood is painting him as black as the dripping beast on top of him.

Everything in you wants to run. You force words out through the quaver in your voice, against your desperate heartbeat; “Ronan? I can’t tell -”

“It’s on top of me,” he spits back, and you can hear the strain and the jagged edge to his every inhale. The horror doesn’t make a sound, and it’s awful, spread body seems to be smothering Ronan, blocking him from your view, blending into the moonless darkness of the world. The field might as well be a void for all you can see, an ocean at night, threats invisible beneath the glossy dark. Ronan makes a strangled grunt of pain, and your hands clench tighter around the metal in your hand.

If the creature’s over Ronan, you won’t hit him. You swing the crowbar up and bring it down as hard as you can, though the impact feels more like striking foam than a body, metal sinking deep into the soft, oily body of a nightmare. The thing howls, rearing around, but arms snake up, snatch it around the middle, hold it down. “The fucking _head_ , Parrish!”

You wrench the crowbar back out of the sticky flesh of the monster’s torso, and bring it down again. There is a loud, surreal crunch as you cave the horror’s skull in. Then there’s nothing.

Ronan struggles out from under the thing, somehow panting but stoic. He doesn’t say anything. You’re not sure there’s anything to say. The crowbar is still deep in the horror’s head, and he braces one foot against the body as he pulls it free in a hideous spurt of oily blood.

“Fuck,” he says eventually, and then again, more decisive. “Fuck. Help me get it in the trunk.”

You almost laugh when you see he actually loaded a tarp into the BMW’s trunk, ready for this circumstance. You don’t, though, because the boot has a light and the light shows how ruined you both look, clothes torn, skin torn, black and red rippling down your shirts in almost artistic patterns. Ronan’s worse than you; he looks like he wrestled a buzz saw and lost. From the front, you think you got off lighter, but your shirt is sticking damply to your back.

Pain will catch up with your head very soon, you’re sure. For now, you just slide back into the passenger side, sitting far enough forward on the seat that there won’t be any pressure on your back. The seat belt lines up exactly with the broken skin on your neck, so you leave that off, too. Ronan drives you both back to Monmouth very slowly.

The others still aren’t back. You sit on the counter in the kitchen/laundry/bathroom, dripping viscous muck and vaguely hoping that no one actually uses the surface to prepare food. Your numbness is slowly dissolving into the pain and fear that you should already be feeling. Resentment that Ronan actually took you out to find that thing, grossly underprepared. Anger at yourself for going. The knowledge of how close those razor point claws got to your eyes.

“Here,” Ronan says, “Get your shirt off.” He’s armed with a washcloth, so you comply, easing your tattered shirt over your head and adding its cost to everything else you’ve spent tonight. You wouldn’t expect him to be gentle, but he must have had a lot of practice with this exact kind of injury; he eases the cool, damp towel over your injuries, cleaning them up enough to treat. He spends a long time on your back. You don’t want to know; you just shiver when stray drops of water run down your spine.

You help Ronan clear the gunk from his skin, and the two of you take turns with the disinfectant and gauze, his hands steady over all your new, stinging cuts, your fingers trailing over his old scars before they reach the new ones. It would take too much of your energy to be angry, and so little to just lean into him.

Despite everything, it is still too hot.

“Sleep here,” he tells you. You imagine dragging yourself back to St Agnes and agree, falling back onto the leather couch. It feels like a very long time since you were last here, watching Ronan play pool.

He drops onto the floor beside you, leaning back until his head is pressed into the seat, next to your chest, and you reach out to him almost unconsciously, hand curling over the edge of his tattoo. He closes his eyes while you trace the loops of the highest Celtic knot, and says, “What did I tell you?”

“About what?” you mutter, far too tired to play along.

“Night horrors being great for romance.”

You smack him on the side of the head, all sound, no force.

He laughs, genuine but exhausted, something in him still undeniably happy. You were expecting an apology, but now you know you’ll never get one. “What do you want to hunt next week, Parrish? Lions? Sharks? Kavinsky?”

“Moths,” you suggest. “Gansey’s glasses, next time he loses them.”

Ronan snorts like you’re not being fun, but you can see the smile curling the edge of his mouth. The warmth in the room presses down, stifling, gentle, and you are the kind of tired that you only feel after near-death experiences. Your hand slips down Ronan’s shoulder to dangle over his chest and he reaches up to take it.

Your last lucid thoughts are that this would never have happened if Gansey had been home, and also that you are probably going to make the mistake of doing what Ronan wants every time he asks.   

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought. I also have a [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/).


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